One thing that's puzzled me for a while is how Dan claims that it's best to have a couple of mediocre-bad rounds towards the start of the game.

Daniel has claimed on this forum that it doesn't pay to remove lots of blues early on in the game.

It ties in with the Banker often claiming that it's best to take out the low reds early on.

But surely, the best thing to do is to take out as many blues as early as possible?

Think of it this way, in the first three rounds, a player takes out 7 blues and 4 reds to be left with a board of:

10p
£1
£50
£500

£3000
£10000
£15000
£35000
£75000
£100000
£250000

Surely, by taking out so many blues, the player has now made any amount of £10000 (arguably £15000 with the amounts involved) and under, to all intents and purposes, a blue.

Also, I'm not wrong in saying that it's a lot better in terms of the offer to have a low red up against a high value than a blue up against a high value when you get down to the last two boxes. So why wish to get rid of these low reds in favour of blues?

All I can think of is that people think in a psychological way that it leaves more blues to hit than reds. However, as I said above, the more blues you get rid of, the more you can treat the lower reds as blue.

I hope that made sense!

I think that if you take out a lot of blues to begin with then the offers are going to be really high at the start of the game. But then later on in the game you would have to start hitting the high reds which means your very high offers that started off your game would start to decrease. (An example of this is Matt's game where he had a second offer of £35,000 then his game started to fall apart and won £5,000)

Whereas if you take a lot of high amounts early on then your offers are going to start low but then you start to take out the blues and the offers will increase (big example of a game like this is Keran's!) But of course theres a few games where the luck just continues throughout the game (Like Brenda who had fantastic luck and Nikki who had disaterious luck all the way through there games!)

I hope that makes sense!

I don't think it matters whether you take out blues or low reds, you just want to avoid
£10,000-£250,000 for as long as possible. People think £10,000 is expendable, but it's a good backup amount
that can really help offers when combined with Power 5 amounts near the end.

What matters is the strength of the board at the first Acceptable Deal Point of eight-box, as most people either don't want to Deal any earlier or they get coaxed - subtly or otherwise - into turning down the first three offers because 'it's the done thing' to do.

However, assuming the Banker reacts to momentum disproportionately, then you'd rather have blue hits in rounds 3 and 4 than in 1 and 2. They say it's not how you start, it's how you finish. For a conservative player in particular, the key might actually be the middle rounds.

You want to remove as many blues as soon as possible and Matt's game didn't really 'fall apart' - he could have bailed out for 25K!

Oh Matt's game. Again, he had a decent though not exceptional eight-box board, and how he got there would've been immaterial had it not been for THAT 14-box offer (which would've taken me, and anyone else who can do the maths and not believe the game starts at 8-box, out of the chair in 35,000 nanoseconds).

I guess it depends whether you're talking about what makes the 'best game' here if you're talking about turnarounds and taking out blues later . i.e. 100K Gaz, Maria etc.

but apart from that just take out the blues early on

You always want to hit low numbers at any stage of the game - what I (and I suspect Daniel) would argue is that if you're going to have a good round and a bad round, better to have the good round in the second half of the game as that tends to trigger a better relative offer than getting to the same situation through a bad round.

true although the banker can mess with that - see the new years day game.

Thats pretty much what I was trying to say. If you can pick any boxes to go, it would be in perfect order from a penny upwards, so it is always good to get rid of blues, but if you are to take 5 blues out of the game at any point, it is more profitable to have that happen near the serious end of the game. The first couple of offers never really give true value. if someone gets a first offer of £16,000 after a dream star of 5 blues (any), people will often still see that as an excellent offer, but the truth is that it's not even 50% the mean. The first few offers have begun to sound impressive, but no-one ever takes them because they are not actually that good, merely good in the context of what a first offer should be. DOND would lose advertising if someone went straight away on the first offer, because not everyone wants to wait another 30 mins for the proveout, thats why in 1000 games, there has never been an offer that would even sway the most safe of players. they use the first offers to feel out were a players bite point is. To do that, they build up in generosity, usually peaking at 5 or 8 box and often drop at 2 box if there is a big split in amount.

So I don't mean that you would PREFER the lower red/ mid blues to go early, but if you are going to lose a set selection of boxes, lose them from the biggest to smallest in order would yield better offers. Momentum going into 8 and 5 box is what gets good offers. If you get your good rounds early, you won't be rewarded.

Nearly right, but a contestant was offered £18,000 as an opening offer after taking out £75,000 in the opening round (!!!), didn't take it, and never got a five-figure offer again. By the sounds of it he was a relatively cautious and not particularly wealthy player either, so he really should have taken it. I would have done!

There are also several examples of second offers that could and should have been taken, including one involving the last great statistician on the wings, Krypton Factor semi-finalist Aaron Bell. He admitted himself he didn't turn down the £30,000 for the right reasons.

Howard took out the £15k as well in the first round! (Even more reason to have dealt!!)

Where did I do this, please? What are "the right reasons," anyway?

My statistical view on the £30k was that there was still a significant amount of upside to be gained, and I was comfortable with the risk involved. Criticising the No Deal now, on the basis that it was the highest offer, is after-timing - if I'd known I would find the £250,000 in the next three boxes, I'd obviously have taken the offer.

My emotional view was as I said at the time, that it did feel a bit too early and I did want to "put on a show". These aren't unworthy reasons though they may not appeal to you, KP. Looking back, I have more satisfaction having played the game as I did, though it did cost me £5k [and could have cost me a lot more]. Money isn't everything (why else would I enter a TV show with no prize? )

Nice to see the site is still going strong - unfortunately I rarely get to watch the show these days as my working arrangements are not so congenial.

All the best, Aaron

To be fair, I'd rather take perhaps one Power 5 hit in the first round (preferably the £35,000/£50,000 than have say an all blue opening.

2/3 blues, 1/2 low reds and a power 5 amount would be a decent enough opening round for me.

And as people have said, I'd rather have all blue rounds later in the game.

Thanks for replying!

You're right that there is an element of pride in any game, and that there is rationality in playing for pride. I, however, would argue that playing on - and risking a life-changing sum of money, albeit with little chance of losing the lot if the Banker continued to be generous (and he did) - purely because of the 'expectations' of playing on further 'for the sake of the show' is irrational behaviour.

But then, I'm a firm believer that this show excessively advocates irresponsible gambling, and it's become a lot worse in that since you were on the wings, so maybe I'm too cynical?

(And besides, where the hell would he have gone in generosity at the third offer if your third round was anything like the first two??)

That has to be the reason why over 960 contestants have not dealt the 1st and 2nd offers.

It would be interesting to hear back from contestants as to whether the producers ever talked to them about taking early deals, is it forbidden to deal the first offer? At the very least you would think that they would discourage it.

Personally I would love to see a 1st round or 2nd round deal just because of the novelty value of it even though I wouldn't do so myself if I was playing. Not only that but there HAVE been a number of instances where the 1st and 2nd round offers have been the highest of the game.

Admittedly we don't get the same kind of early offers as we did when Aaron was playing, but we have seen some high early offers lately.

I think there's a subtle difference between playing on 'for the sake of the show' (as you put it, KP) and 'putting on a show' (as Aaron put it). The former implies that the player is acting contrary to their feelings, solely to provide entertainment for others, whereas the latter suggests that the motivation for providing entertainment to others is actually coming from the player themself! (Not that Aaron was solely swayed by this motivation, of course. He has said -- and is still saying now -- that there were still good mathematical reasons for continuing. I'd be very surprised if he'd have still turned the offer down if those mathematical reasons weren't also there.)

You have simply turned cynical, KP - simple as!

I wasn't around during 2006 so never saw Aaron post on here...if he's reading, hope he continues to do well in the semis!

As for this thread, I'll quote KP.

Three blues, an orange and the £100,000 is probably the best opening round to have.

Hence what I put in my post.

I will say that they absolutely never directly told us how to lay our games. There may be some indirect hinting that they want people to "go for it" and how much they want to see big wins, but the savvy people amongst us realized that if we all "went for the big wins", then a vast majority of us would go home devastated. Luckily, up until this point, we have been incredibly consistent (15-16k seems the norm) with only Walter (nothing he could do with that game) and Steve (never really got that perfect offer) managing to go home with blue money. Thats the way I wanted to see the game played. I saw how Tony felt after he chased the big dream and I think that got a lot of people thinking a little safer, which then passed onto the newbies and so on and so on.

I think they do encourage a bit of bravery (for want of a better word), but would never ever ask someone to play out of their character. I'm happy with this and have no problems with them egging us on a bit. When it comes down to it, they have given us a free chance at big money. Thats why I agree you have to put a bit of a show on, thats your part of the deal, but until this point, I knew that it would not affect my gameplay. I never thought that it would affect my decision.

Whether my opinion on this changes by the time it's my game or the groups consistency changes will be seen in the upcoming weeks..........